


Cat and Mouse

by xxSparksxx



Series: And Then There Were Two [15]
Category: And Then There Were None (TV 2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 11:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20891678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxSparksxx/pseuds/xxSparksxx
Summary: She glances left and right, sweeping her gaze across pavement and road both. The man is there still. Not as close to her as before. He’s paused a few dozen yards before the crossing, far enough away to avoid suspicion, but close enough for Vera to be certain it’s the same man. She crosses the street, walks another block, and then stops again at another crossing. He’s still behind her, nonchalantly pausing to light another cigarette. It’s definitely the same man, and he’s definitely following her.





	Cat and Mouse

**Author's Note:**

> A Vera fic in which Philip doesn't actually appear. Shock! But he's very present, nonetheless.
> 
> Beta-read by the wonderful Lucretiassister

Somebody tries to follow Vera home from work that evening.

She doesn’t notice it at first. It’s been a long day, and she’s more than ready for it to be over. Everybody who’d come into the surgery, it seemed, had wanted to talk to her about the news from across the Atlantic. All day she’s had to pretend to care, pretend to be worried about England and the war. It has been an unexpected strain. She’s not tired exactly, but worn a little thin. It’s not the lies themselves that have worn her out, though she’s usually glad to get home and be able to simply _be_, without masks or pretences. It’s the lies on top of the way she’s been distracted, all day, by Philip’s strange behaviour that morning, when he’d walked her to work. And not just his behaviour, the furtive watchfulness that perhaps nobody but she would have seen, but the lie he’d told her.

He’d _lied_ to her. After all his insistence on having the truth from her, he’d lied to her without batting an eyelid. And she is furious. She is beyond furious, she is ablaze with anger at him. She has tried to think clearly about it, tried to examine what his reasoning might be, but in the end, it all comes back to one simple fact. He’s lied to her. He, who claims to despise hypocrites, has performed an act of such hypocrisy that she cannot bring herself to care why he has done so. No doubt he’ll have justifications for it when she confronts him, as she intends to do. No doubt he’ll have his reasons. But he must be made to understand that she can stomach a refusal to talk much more than she can stomach a lie, from Philip. Especially now, after all they’ve been through. He isn’t the only one with the right to expect honesty, after all.

By six o’clock, and the end of the working day, the anger is buzzing in Vera’s mind, boiling beneath her skin. It’s almost a living entity. It has made it harder than usual to keep up the façade that she must always wear, outside the walls of her home, and when at last she leaves the surgery, she’s so wrapped up in her own head that she doesn’t notice anything is amiss for at least half a block. It’s only when she pauses to look at a new display of hats in the haberdasher’s window that she catches a reflection, in the glass, of a man who seems to be loitering behind her.

She lingers at the window for a few moments. The new hats are a convenient excuse to give herself a chance to think. She doesn’t recognise the man. Tall, broad-shouldered, straw-coloured hair and a trace of a beard. He’s leaning against a lamppost on the street behind her, smoking a cigarette and watching the cars pass him by. Perhaps he’s merely waiting for something. A lift, or a rendezvous. Maybe his girlfriend works in one of the shops on this street, and he’s waiting for her to finish work for the day. Maybe. If it hadn’t been for Philip’s alertness this morning, Vera might be able to convince herself that she’s jumping at shadows. But he’d been watching for something. And when she’d asked if she should be worried about anything, he’d lied to her.

Her anger is gone. No, not gone, but shoved away, buried beneath pragmatic necessity. There’s no room for it now. She has to think clearly, and act carefully. There are, she thinks, three possibilities. The first, the one she can’t quite believe, is that this man has nothing to do with her, isn’t following her, that it’s all coincidence and happenstance. The streets of Brooklyn are full of people at this time of day, and there’s no reason to suppose he’s following her. None at all. Except that he stopped when she stopped. She hadn’t realised it at the time but now, having glimpsed him, she has become aware of it. It could be coincidence, but her life hasn’t led her to any real belief in coincidences.

The second possibility is that Philip has made an enemy who somehow has discovered where she works, and thinks he can get at Philip through her. It would make sense, especially given his odd behaviour this morning. Philip has been very keen to establish her reputation among the people he works with, and equally keen that she should know how to use the knife he’d given her at Christmas. Yes, it’s possible. Likely, even. He’s been working protection for a rich family, and she’s assumed the family have criminal connections. Somebody might be trying to use her against Philip in order to use Philip against his current employers. Or it might be somebody with a grudge against Philip, which would be simpler, but no less unpleasant to contemplate.

And the third possibility…

The third is that Philip has set someone to follow her for some reason. To protect her, perhaps, though she’s hardly defenceless. She carries her knife everywhere, in the pocket of her coat or in her handbag, when the weather’s been too hot for a coat. He’s shown her a few moves to use against an assailant. She’s no expert, but she could slow down an opponent if necessary. Long enough to make a run for it, and she’s a fast runner. She can outpace even a man, given a head start. Philip knows that. It’s what he’d told her to do, if anything ever happened: stab or slice, slow her enemy down, and then get away as fast as she can. 

Or maybe he’s set a guard on her; maybe he still doesn’t trust her, despite everything. But though the thought flits across her mind, demanding to be acknowledged, she can’t truly believe it. Philip had lied to her this morning but whatever reason he had for that, she doesn’t think it was because of a lack of trust in her. No, if this man has been ordered to follow her by Philip, it’s because he’s worried someone will hurt her. But he knows she can take care of herself. He knows she’s not without resources, that she can and will fight in her own defence. Setting someone to follow her, to protect her…it doesn’t quite add up. 

Unless his lie this morning wasn’t his only lie. But she would know if it was. She knows the look of his lies. And he’d promised her, he’d sworn he knows she isn’t breakable. So why, then, would he go against his word, against his own knowledge of her capabilities, by paying for someone to keep an eye on her? She flinches away from the question. She doesn’t want to think it possible. Not after everything. But she’d never thought he’d lie to her. What had been so clear, this morning, is now as clear as mud.

She has to put that aside and deal with the situation she’s now in. She has to deal with the smoking, straw-haired man in the street behind her. Anything else will have to wait until she has more information. She can’t even be sure, yet, that the man behind her _is_ following her; perhaps, after all, she’s leaping to conclusions. Letting her imagination, such as it is, run ahead of her. First things first, she tells herself. There’s only one way to be certain. She has to keep going.

She leaves the haberdasher’s window and continues on her way. Casually, easily, one foot in front of another, pretending all she’s thinking about is what to cook for supper. Further down the street she has to cross the road and there, paused on the kerb, she glances left and right, sweeping her gaze across pavement and road both. The man is there still. Not as close to her as before. He’s paused a few dozen yards before the crossing, far enough away to avoid suspicion, but close enough for Vera to be certain it’s the same man. She crosses the street, walks another block, and then stops again at another crossing. He’s still behind her, nonchalantly pausing to light another cigarette. It’s definitely the same man, and he’s definitely following her. 

Her options are limited. She won’t let him follow her home, because if he doesn’t know where she and Philip live, she isn’t going to give him that information. But confronting him would be foolish when she doesn’t know if he’s been set on her by Philip or by some unknown foe. He’s not police; that much she knows. She’s too practiced a liar to be fooled by a policeman in plain clothes. They still carry themselves the same way, shoulders back and an air of officialdom about them that shows despite the lack of uniform. 

So she can’t go home, and turning and facing the man could end up with her in trouble. The most sensible course of action is to lose him somehow. 

She crosses over the road, but turns left instead of right. Left takes her past an apartment building and then along another row of shops. Stores, they call them here, though she can’t get her head around the different terminology, no matter that she’s been here nine months. There’s a pawnshop, a newsagent, a grocery shop, a bakery. She doesn’t often come down here, there’s a grocer’s closer to home that she tends to use, but she knows the bakery. She likes the bread from here, and Philip likes the pies. She doesn’t go in now, but she slows, idling past the shop windows as if she’s thinking about it. There’s another sewing machine in the pawnshop, not as nice as the one she’d bought from there after Christmas. 

She risks a glance over her shoulder; the man is still there. She refuses to give in to something so unhelpful as panic, but she’ll admit to being worried. She isn’t exactly practised at shaking off a tail. She’s never had to do it before. There’s never been any reason for anyone to follow her. She wishes she could find some way of telling whether he’s one of Philip’s associates or someone less friendly. Either way, he should have told her the truth. And either way it’s fuel for her anger, which is tucked away for now but no less ferocious for being so. 

There’s a subway station at the end of this block; it’s why she came this way. The easiest way to draw somebody away from her home, she thinks, is to get further away from it. Then she can try to lose him. It ought to be easy enough, on the subway. She can go across the river to Manhattan, then double back somewhere. She’s tempted to go all the way to Hell’s Kitchen, to the known safety of the bar there. She’d have to change from subway to bus, but she knows the route. She’s met Philip there once or twice since that evening back in December when she’d first gone there, to patch him up after that knife injury. She knows the people who tend to hang around there, too. Morgan, Wilson. A few others. And the man who owns the bar, Murphy, looks like a prize wrestler but has a soft spot for pretty young Mrs Lombard. If Vera goes there now, he’d make sure she wasn’t followed home again afterwards. Or he’d be able to tell her if her pursuer is friendly. It’s five miles across the city, but it might be worth it.

Too far, she decides. She knows how to get to and from the bar, true, but she’s not familiar enough with the neighbourhood there. Her instincts tell her to stay on her own turf. She knows the roads here, the alleys, the buildings. She’s been in Brooklyn long enough to know some of the short-cuts and some of the places where it’s easy to get lost. Going too far afield would leave her too vulnerable. The subway is still a good idea, though. If she can just get herself lost in the crowds on the platform or in the train, get off at the next station, maybe, and walk back…that’s what Philip would tell her to do, probably. Keep going, use her head. She can almost hear him telling her to be careful. Be sensible. 

She doesn’t go down into the subway. Instead she goes to the neighbouring drugstore and orders herself a fizzy drink. Soda, rather, she corrects herself mentally, before she can draw attention to herself by ordering the wrong thing. Then she sits at the counter and takes out her compact mirror, pretending to check her appearance. Outside the drugstore, the straw-haired man slouches against a wall, still smoking. Once again he looks like he’s just waiting for someone. A friend, a date. She might admire how easily he projects a casual air of indifference, in other circumstances. If he weren’t following her. 

Vera sips her drink slowly and ponders her choices. They haven’t changed. Avoid or confront. Find some way to shake him off, or find some way to meet him head-on. The prudent option is still evasion. It’s the path she’d been determined to choose until she’d come in here, buying herself time with an egg cream. Too sweet for her tastes, really. But worth the price of a few cents, for the safety of being in full view of a number of people. If her follower intends her harm, he can’t possibly do so while she’s in here. Not without drawing unwanted attention. And if he doesn’t mean her harm…well, she’s spent a dime unnecessarily, that’s all. 

She knows what Philip would have her do. She can imagine what he’ll say, how he’ll look, if she’s impetuous now. Impatient, he’d call it. It’s true, patience has never been her virtue, and she doesn’t want to wait to find out from Philip whether this man following her is friend or foe. She doesn’t want to spend the next hour, two hours even, playing cat and mouse around Brooklyn. She wants answers, and she wants them now. Or if not now, at least soon. Sooner than if she has to wait for Philip, who’d warned her, this morning, that he would be home late tonight. ‘_Don’t wait up,_’ he’d said, right after he’d lied to her. ‘_There’s nothing,_’ he’d said, when she’d asked if there was anything going on that she ought to know about. Lies. And this man following her, this shadow she’s acquired, proves it.

Vera closes her eyes for a few moments. The anger is rattling the cages of the bars she’s set around it. She can’t afford to be angry now, any more than she can afford to panic about her next steps. The anger can wait until it’s useful. Panic will do nothing, so she drinks her fizzy lemonade and forces herself to calm down. Where to from here, she wonders. If there’s a back entrance, perhaps she can persuade the waiter to let her use it. A story of an ex-boyfriend, perhaps, unable to accept she’s moved on. It would be easier without her wedding ring, but her hands are a little tanned. Removing the ring would just leave a band of pale skin around her finger. 

Her instincts rebel against running, anyway. She’s no cornered animal, trying to flee a trap. She has her knife, she knows a little of how to use it. She has her lies, a silver tongue and a quick mind. Nobody but Philip has ever triumphed over her when she uses those weapons. There must be a way to get the information she needs. Perhaps…yes, perhaps…

She finishes her drink and rummages in her handbag. It only takes a moment to find what she’s looking for. Then she rises, checking the drape of her coat to disguise the quick check of her pocket, to make sure the knife is still where it should be. It is, so she puts her handbag over her shoulder and heads out of the drugstore. 

The man is still there, still smoking. To all appearances he’s just casually loitering there, watching the street, smiling at a couple of kids racing past on bicycles. But Vera, who’s used to catching the smallest of expressions, the tiniest of gestures that build up together, in most people, to displays of emotion…Vera sees his rapid, deliberate glance at the drugstore door, when she pulls it open and steps outside.

This could be very dangerous, she knows. But she really isn’t good at being patient.

She sighs at herself, loud and frustrated, and makes a show of looking into her bag. “Bother it,” she says, pulling out a packet of cigarettes. A curse would not be inappropriate, but that’s a card she wants to hold in reserve. Instead she keeps searching in her handbag, and then stops and looks up, glancing around as if looking for something. She lets her gaze alight on her stalker only after another frustrated sigh. “Oh!” she exclaims. “Oh, sir, excuse me – do you have a light?”

The straw-haired man looks startled and, when he realises who’s speaking to him, rather unhappy. That tells her something: for all his nonchalance, he’s not good at reacting quickly to changes. 

“Uh, I, er –,” he fumbles. Vera proffers her cigarette, lets it dangle between her fingers. Close to, he’s perhaps a little too handsome to be truly inconspicuous. The hair is a beacon, as well, so very blond. If he was doing this often, she thinks, he’d dye it. Or someone would tell him to, if he’s not clever enough to work it out for himself Probably not used to this particular kind of work, but not unskilled at it. Probably nobody else would have realised they were being followed, not on a busy street. 

He fumbles in his jacket pocket. “Sure,” he mumbles, “I, er…” While he’s preoccupied with finding a match, Vera has the briefest of moments to sweep her eyes across him, looking for any sign that he’s armed. There’s nothing obvious. She knows better than to assume that means he’s not carrying a weapon of some sort. “Here you go, ma’am.” He produces a matchbook at last. His hands are a little sweaty. It’s a warm day, but not _that_ warm. He’s nervous, he’s on edge. She must be careful. Very careful. 

“I must have left mine at work,” she says chattily, offering a bright smile and a sheepish shrug of her shoulder. Unthreatening. A pretty woman at the end of the working day, just wanting a cigarette as she walks home. It’s an easy part to play. “Thank you so much.” She takes the book, strikes a match, lights her cigarette. Then the stamped logo on the matchbook catches her eye. It’s simple, unadorned: the name of a bar with two straight lines underneath. She knows the image. She’s seen it before, on coasters, and the name of the bar is painted in dull green lettering over the door. 

It’s from the bar in Hell’s Kitchen. 

She doesn’t know much about Philip’s work life, but she knows he values loyalty, and she knows he doesn’t trust easily. If he didn’t trust the people for whom the bar functioned as a base of operations, he would never have allowed her to go there. He’d never have taken her back, afterwards. And Murphy has a soft spot for Vera; she’s cultivated that, because one could never tell when somebody’s emotional attachments might be useful. It follows, therefore, that Murphy wouldn’t let anybody into the bar who intends Philip or Vera harm. 

As reasoning goes, it’s not foolproof. A matchbook is the sort of thing that might be picked up and tossed aside easily enough. This man could have picked it out of a rubbish bin, for all she knows. It could be a bluff, a way to make her think she’s safe when she isn’t. But she thinks not. This man’s lies, close to, aren’t good enough for that. And his surprise, when she’d approached him, was genuine. He hadn’t been able to conceal it, as a good liar would. As she does, when taken off guard. Her first response is to lie; this man’s was to falter and stumble.

Her anger is a living thing within her again, a thrumming beat that insists on being heard. This is Philip’s doing. He has set this man to follow her. And since she can’t believe, after all they’ve shared, that he still doesn’t trust her…

There must be some danger that he’s trying to conceal from her. A danger he should have told her about. She’d thought them equal partners. Philip’s lie, his actions, show he thinks otherwise. This is, she thinks distantly, because of what she’d done in the spring. He’s treating her as somebody who must be protected, who must be cosseted. He’s treating her like she’s _fragile_. He’d sworn he doesn’t think of her that way, that he knows she’s stronger than she looks, but now he’s lying to her, setting men to follow her, because…what? He doesn’t think she can take care of herself? 

She seethes at the idea. Philip ought to know better. He ought to know _her_ better, after all this time. Nine months. Nearly ten, since they met. And he’s stripped her bare, scoured her bones, found every last secret, and yet still he treats her like she’s any other woman. Like she’s _ordinary_. A fragile little girl, barely strong enough to stand up straight when a wind’s blowing. As if she doesn’t have teeth and claws and venom of her own. How dare he, she fumes. How _dare_ he?

She brings the cigarette to her mouth, inhales a breath, exhales smoke. Nothing of her anger shows. Her mask hasn’t faltered. Her realisation has taken no more than a moment or two. 

“Thank you,” she says again. It’s a little more effort to make her tone breezy, but only a little. “I’m forever leaving my matches behind. And there’s no use having a cigarette without a light, is there?”

“Uh, no, ma’am,” the man mutters, still uneasy. Vera passes back the matchbook and pauses for another drag of her cigarette. There’s a fine line between being casual and being careless, but a moment more won’t hurt. Just long enough to judge if her shadow has any other information to offer up to her, willingly or unwillingly. But nothing is forthcoming. He says nothing else, just shifts from one foot to the other. His discomfort couldn’t be more obvious. Time to go. She gives him one last smile, wishes him good evening. He mumbles a ‘good evening, ma’am’ in response. A poor liar after all, at least with his words. It’s almost a disappointment.

As for Philip…well, his lie will catch up with him, just as soon as he comes home tonight. No matter how late that is. She’ll cook herself some supper, listen to the wireless, maybe read a little. She’ll be awake when he gets home, awake and ready to confront him. To demand answers. Ready to dig her claws in and shake until he believes, truly, that she doesn’t need to be wrapped up in cotton wool and won’t stand to be followed by anyone, for any reason. 

No, she doesn’t intend to sleep on her anger. She means to let it roar.


End file.
